ALLISON JANNEY on what it's really like to work with Blake Lively

starts every day like a normal person: playing . But while I play alone, she dukes it out with 91-year-old Hollywood grandee Carol Burnett. 'My starting word is 'stale', says Janney, who befriended Burnett through their Los Angeles-set TV show Palm Royale. 'Every day we play Wordle and Connections. Every day I get a text from Carol Burnett, and it makes my day.' Although, 'I just found out she plays with other people. She plays with . I think there's many more. She's got a whole Wordle racket. And she's very good. She gets it in two too many times.'

Janney, 65, hasn't done an in-person print interview in years, preferring the low-stakes venue of Zoom, and she's asked me to meet her at 10.45am for an equally low-stakes breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien in the San Fernando Valley of . Here dogs sit politely at the heels of suburbanite owners sipping lattes at wooden tables. She's eight minutes early, which she says is a mark of someone trained in theatre acting, where if you're a minute late, your understudy takes your part. She orders an Arnold Palmer iced tea and lemonade, and skillet-baked eggs with avocado, tomato and feta. Though she admits coveting the mini pancakes the young girl next to us is having.

If this isn't the biggest celebrity interview ever to take place at this Le Pain Quotidien, then it must come awfully close. It's near the Oscar-winner's house, and she comes in often, though she does look cooler than anyone else here. She's 6ft tall, and her blue eyes are highlighted by turquoise Monocle frames that she bought when shooting her new film , director Paul Feig's sequel to 2018 murder mystery, in Rome. She's wearing R13 jeans, a white T-shirt under a vintage jacket and carries a pink Louis Vuitton bag. She looks like a gallerist who might sell me a Damien Hirst.